In The Attic
by Daylight
Summary: There are some very strange things in Bobby's attic including something the brothers thought they had lost.


**In the Attic**

**By Daylight**

The attic of Bobby's house was much like the rest of it, dusty and cluttered, only more so. Sunlight crept through gaps in boarded up windows silhouetting broken furniture, sagging cardboard boxes and an assortment of curiosities whose origins Dean could only guess at, all crammed into whatever space could be found below the house's sloping roof. It was hot, the musty air stifling, and both Winchester brothers would much rather be elsewhere. Unfortunately, they were stuck in there until they could find what they needed.

Dean did his best to move the heavy box as slowly and as carefully as he could placing it gently on the floor, but despite his efforts, a cloud of dust sprang up the moment it hit the ground.

He sneezed.

"Bless you," Sam called out from the other side of the room.

Scowling, Dean glanced over just making out his brother's amused smile in the dim light. "Bless me one more time and I'm going to get you ordained as a priest."

"It's not my fault you've got a sensitive nose," Sam replied before disappearing behind a stack of boxes marked 'Aztec Stuff'.

"At least, it's the only part of me that's sensitive."

The only reply was a loud thud and curse.

"Oh, and watch your head," Dean added with a grin.

"Shut up," Sam said and gave a groan. "My back's never going to be the same after this."

Dean's grin grew wider, but it faded as he turned back to the scene in front of him. The collection of old and rusty weaponry he could understand, but why did Bobby have a six foot tall totem pole and how the hell did he get it all the way up in the attic? He turned away not liking how the figure at the top was looking at him.

The attic was packed so full simply moving across it required extreme acts of agility. Dean had found himself climbing over things and under things, contorting his body into the most bizarre positions just to slip through the smallest of openings. After over an hour of digging his way into the centre of the room, he was beginning to wonder if he'd ever be able to make his way out again.

After moving a jar whose contents he tried to not look too closely at, he finally managed to free the large trunk he'd been aiming for. He knelt in front of it and opened the lid holding his breath as more dust poured off. Across the room he could hear the scrape of wood against wood as Sam pushed something heavy out of his way.

"You'd think Bobby would have left the dagger in a slightly better spot," Dean said as he peered into the trunk. Grabbing his flashlight from his belt, he shone it on the contents. If there was a light in this attic, he had yet to find it. "You know somewhere a bit more accessible, somewhere he'd actually remember."

"How was he supposed to know we'd need a dagger of Ragoro?" Sam's voice came from behind a faded ping pong table. "The only thing it kills are Rompos and they're only supposed to live in Africa and India."

"They're also only supposed to eat dead bodies and I think those three people that that pack hunted down would disagree." The elder Winchester shifted through the items in the trunk, but he had a feeling he wouldn't be finding the missing dagger there. All he saw were dresses, pink, yellow, and floral dresses. He placed them all carefully back where he found them, knowing how important Bobby's wife's things were to the old man even though he probably hadn't seen them in years. "Considering our luck, all potential weapons should be properly catalogued and left within easy access."

Dean heard Sam snort in reply. "Considering our luck, we should probably just lock ourselves in the panic room indefinitely with an unlimited supply of food and ammunition. Not that it would do much good."

Dean frowned. When did Sam become such a pessimist? Wasn't Dean supposed to be the cynical one? Maybe it was after Sam returned from the hell or maybe after he accidently started the apocalypse or after Dean died that first time or after their Dad died or… Okay, so he had a lot of good reasons to be pessimistic, but despite everything that had happened, Dean never seemed to be able to let go of the image of the chubby little Sammy full of curiosity and optimism.

He closed the lid of the trunk with a sigh and began stacking things back on top so he'd have room to get somewhere new.

"Yeah, well. At least, we always give as good as we get," he countered in a half-hearted effort to turn the conversation in a positive direction.

"And get as good as we give."

Sometimes, Dean really missed the old Sam.

Rubbing a grubby hand across his grubby face, he rested for a moment in his tiny clearing amongst the towering clutter before aiming for another set of unmarked boxes.

"I'm really beginning to think we should reconsider my 'let's just firebomb the hell out of them' plan," he said as he moved aside a portrait of someone he really hoped wasn't one of Bobby's ancestors. "Not many creatures like fire. A few Molotov cocktails and we're done. Much better than tracking down some supposedly mystical, ancient dagger in this mess."

There was no response from the other side of the room and Dean rolled his eyes at the obvious silent disagreement.

"So the whole thing might backfire and we might accidently set fire to the entire town. I'm sure they'd prefer having the town burnt to the ground rather than invaded by a pack of hungry Rompos. I mean it's not like they can't rebuild, right?"

The far corner of the room remained quiet.

"Sam?" Dean questioned with growing concern in his tone. "Sam!"

There was no reply.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," Dean muttered as he gazed across the crowded attic for a possible route to his brother. Of all the things to come between them, dusty piles of useless junk. Sam could be having another seizure for all he knew. Hell, considering the sorts of things Bobby dealt with, it's entirely possible he left something more than a little dangerous up here. Concern and impatience left Dean with only the most direct route. He began to climb.

Things creaked and wobbled beneath him as he made his unsteady way across the room. Various objects were knocked about and scattered, and a three legged desk almost sent him toppling as a cloud of dust became alive in the air, but Dean soon spotted his brother and managed to squeeze his way into a spot beside him.

Unfortunately, the moment he did so he was overwhelmed by a sneezing fit and had to do his best to check out Sam between the sneezes. The younger Winchester seemed fine, just frozen, kneeling on the ground and gazing at an object held in his hands.

"Sam, what…?" Dean sneezed again.

"Pokey!" Sam proclaimed.

"Huh?"

"It's Pokey!" Sam repeated waving the object, which proved to be an incredibly old and ragged teddy bear, in Dean's face.

"Sam, you didn't happen to find some of Bobby's special moonshine up here?"

The younger brother rolled his eyes. "Look!" Sam waved the bear at him again. "It's Pokey. Come on, you've got to remember Pokey."

Dean frowned. "Yeah, but… Don't be ridiculous. I mean there's no way that could be…"

Suddenly, it was Dean's turn to freeze as he took a closer look at the bear. It was a small, brown teddy bear with paws and a muzzle that must have once been white but were now gray. It could have been any old teddy bear, except there was the missing right ear and the lopsided eyes and the loose nose and the clumsy stitches in the side where Dean had inexpertly tried to fix a hole. There was even the spaghettios stain on the left foot that they'd never quite been able to wash out.

"I'll be damned," Dean whispered leaning back against a crumpled pile of magazines. "You used to take that bear everywhere with you, for years. I couldn't prise it away. I thought you'd end up being buried with him."

"And then when I was seven, Dad told me to get rid of him because I was too old for toys and there was no room to spare in the Impala for things we didn't need," said Sam continuing the story.

Dean smirked. "Yeah, and as I recall, you managed to hide Pokey under your seat for almost a year before Dad found out."

"I thought he threw him away." Sam's expression grew wistful as he continued to stare at the bear.

Dean bore a similar expression as he gazed at his brother. "Hey, remember when we played super teddy bear and climbed all the way to the top of the motel roof to see how far we could get that bear to fly."

Sam let out a chuckle. "We nearly scared that poor woman to death."

"Well, we did hit her in the face by an extremely grubby teddy bear wearing a green face cloth tied around its neck."

"You had to run down and rescue him from her before she threw him in the trash."

"As I recall, that wasn't the only time I had to rescue that bear."

There was a wide smile on Sam's face that Dean hadn't seen in a very long time and he matched it with one of his own.

From somewhere below, they heard Bobby calling their names.

"Come on, Sammy," said Dean placing a hand on his brother's shoulder. "Time to get back to work." As he began to make his way out, he added, "Oh, and don't forget to bring the bear."

The brothers left the attic, Sam with the stuffed bear safely tucked under his arm.


End file.
